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Advanced Level Editor
The Advanced Level Editor, also referred to as the ALE or even Map Editor v1.4, is the latest version of the map editor, which was released along with the v1.20 update. The editor works best with webkit-based browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera Next, and Safari. Other browsers can use this, but some bugs will occur. Unlike the old map editor, this editor is in beta status, and has not replaced the old one yet, although there have been some major differences between both editors; for example, opening a map constructed in the ALE will not load in the old editor, because both editors utilize different save files. Tools FreeEdit tool The FreeEdit tool is used for editing the properties of any object in the map. These properties include the size of walls, region type, and also the ID name of the object. Unlike the old map editor, new drop-down menus replace entering IDs for skins, materials, etc. and contains a list of selectable options for that object. Not only is it used for editing, it can be used to drag and resize walls, regions, pushers and all other resizable things in the map. Resizing can be done by either entering the size in the menu or by clicking the squares on the corners and dragging it around to the desired size. Wall tool The wall tool is for inserting walls into the map. Walls can be moved around and resized, and their material can be edited to one of the materials listed when selected. These materials include the following: *Concrete *Dark Plate *Black *Brown Concrete *Grass *Sand Movable tool Movables, more known as doors or elevators, can only be made by using the movable tool. Just like walls, it can be resized and moved around. Other things that can be edited for movables is its speed and its visibility. 'Speed' is set to 10 by default, but can be altered to any other number. 'Visibility' affects whether the door can be seen, with 'Yes' meaning that it can be seen, where 'No' means it cannot. Doors are also named automatically, with the first door being #door*1, and cannot also move by itself. Doors must rely on a trigger and region in order to actually move around. Region tool The region tool allows users to make regions, which can be resized and moved around via FreeEdit. Regions are named automatically as #region*1 for the first, and affects how triggers are called. The 'Activation trigger' property defines what trigger is going to be called by the region selected, while 'Activation on' describes how the region is going to call the trigger. These include: *Buttons (normal, red, or blue) *Players entering a region (any, red, or blue) *Character in or not in a vehicle *Movable enters region *All allies enter region Pusher tool Pushers are areas that can levitate players a certain direction, or block off where players spawn in TDM and DM. Pushers are automatically named as #pushf*1, and can be resized and moved. In order for pushers to actually "push", a value must be entered to either 'Speed X' or 'Speed Y' spaces. Pushers set to levitate on Y speed will lift or drop entities vertically, with -Y being up and Y being down. The same goes for X, except X will levitate horizontally. -X is left and X value is right. Stability damage affects the players/enemies who enter it. A value of 0 will do nothing, whereas 100 will knock the player down. Also, pushers can deal two types of damage to any player entering it, called base damage and slicing. Base damage just hurts the entity inside until death, whereas slicing damage slowly slices and hurts the entity until the body is sliced in half, similar to what killing rays do when a player/enemy walks through them. Background tool Backgrounds can be made with this tool. They can be resized, moved around, and attached to objects such as doors. In addition, backgrounds can be set to either be rendered in the foreground or the background. The material can also be edited, with the additional option of offsetting the background texture and applying a hex color multiplier. These include: *Usurpation *Ground and Rocks *White, Red, Green, or Blue *Panel bright, dark, or default *Basic *Impure canal *Shadow only *Pixel wall *Pixel background *Pixel open door *Custom approved backgrounds/textures *User approved and unapproved backgrounds/textures Water tool This tool is for creating water. Just like walls and backgrounds, water can be resized and moved around. Water can also deal damage, although acid will appear and not water. Placing water on top of another area of water will darken it, making it more difficult to see if water is continuously stacked on top of each other. Player/Enemy tool Players and Enemies are characters in the map, where players can be controlled and enemies cannot, unless they are allies and casual mode is on. Both have the same properties, with the exception of the ID names, where players are named as #player*1 and enemies as #actor*1. For a full list of skins and teams that can be set for both players and enemies, visit the map editor page. 'Hitpoints' determines what HP they begin with, while 'Max. Hitpoints' defines the maximum amount of HP they can have. 'Direction' indicates whether they first face left or right, and 'In car' determines if they will be in a vehicle, either by selecting a vehicle, or by setting this option to 'Detect automatically', which will place them in the nearest vehicle. 'AI behavior' should be used for enemies only, although players have this setting, too. This affects how enemies will behave, and ranges from following the player, to looking around, to simply standing in place. 'Trigger on death' will call the set trigger when the character's HP count reaches 0. Vehicle tool The vehicle tool is for creating vehicles to use in the map. These vehicles range from Corvettes to ropes and more. Vehicles are named #vehicle*1, when first created, and the direction they face can be changed from left to right. Vehicle models can be edited so that a drone, Corvette, or a Hound Walker-CS can be placed. The models that the vehicles can be changed with include: *Rope *Crate *Mobile rO81-CS *Hound Walker-CS *Drone *Corvette In order to equip a weapon to a vehicle, a gun must be created with the gun tool, and the gun model must be any vehicular weapon. The gun must be placed on the vehicle in the editor for it to be attached. Decoration tool Decorations can be created with this tool only, and are usually used to decorate the map. Decors cannot be resized, but they can be moved around, and are named as #decor*1. A full list can be found at the decorations page. Similarly to backgrounds, custom images can also be used as decorations. Gun tool The gun tool is used to create weapons throughout the map for vehicles and players/enemies to use. Like decors, they cannot be resized, the model chosen depicts how the gun will look and perform in-game. Guns can be set to be picked up by all players, or players in a specific team. Also, their upgrade levels can be set. These levels have a minimum of no upgrades to a maximum of level 3 upgrades. A full list of models that can be selected can be found in the map editor page. Light tool The light tool is used to create lighting around the map and can only be moved. Lights are first named as #light*1, and its power can be changed. Power is how bright the light will be in the map and can affect map loading time. By default, the power is set to 0.4, but as stated, can be changed. Flares indicate whether the light is visible or not. This does not affect the light's brightness, and will still light up a certain area. Barrel tool Barrels can be created with use of this tool. There are only three models to choose from: the orange barrel, the blue barrel and the red barrel. Each does different amounts of damage, and can be moved around as desired. Trigger tool Triggers can be made with the trigger tool, and automatically names them #trigger*1. These cannot be resized, but they can be moved around. There are two ways to call a trigger, by region or by a timer. Triggers have over 50 actions to call, but can only call only 10 actions per trigger. These can be disabled when the map starts, or can be enabled as soon as the map starts. Timers or regions must be required in order to call a trigger, otherwise, it will not work. Each action has a different impact, and can directly affect a character, but can be used to affect certain things in a map. Tip: To make multiple triggers go off, have one trigger activate that in turn activates a timer that then activates another trigger. Timer tool Timers are a way of calling triggers, mostly after a set amount of time. Using the formula of 1 second = 30 value, timers can call triggers with one or more action set, depending on the trigger and what it is used for. They do not call anything else, besides triggers. Timers can be disabled when a map starts, but can also launch on start. Disabled timers will need a trigger to enable them, where they will start counting from 0, up to the set time limit. Engine Mark tool Engine marks are special objects that mostly affect the map. Engine marks allow users to change the sky background, create falling snow, set the maximum amount of grenades that can be used, and more. Some marks include a parameter that must be selected from a drop-down menu, or a typed-in value. These have no ID name, and can affect how a map looks and how it works, for example, setting the maximum amount of grenades that can be used can affect a multiplayer map by limiting grenades. ScaleSelection tool ScaleSelection modifies the size of walls, backgrounds, and other applicable items that can be scaled. To use ScaleSelection, select an object or objects that can be resized. Then select the ScaleSelection tool and enter any number (which will be the percentage of the scaling). This can be any number such as 110, 120 or 30. However, because the level editor counts one pixel as 10x10, numbers such as 125 or 225 will not work and will instead be rounded to a value that follows the 10x10 scaling. Features Layers The Advanced Level Editor allows users to view specific layers at any given point in time. Selecting a certain layer will only show entities and objects that fall under that layer. Walls, backgrounds, doors, etc are all on individual layers which can be accessed in a dropdown menu by clicking More above the All button and as such, can be selected individually, though the ALE has larger layer groups which select multiple layers at once. These include: *All: Every layer is selected. *Nothing: No layer is selected. *Statics: Static objects such as backgrounds, lights, and water areas are selected only. *Logics: Logical objects such as timers, triggers, and regions are selected only. *Entities: Entities such as characters, guns, and vehicles are selected only. Grid Opacity The opacity of the grid can be changed at any time. The two dots option will provide full opacity, while the one dot and zero dot options will provide partial and zero transparancy respectively. Snapping Grid snapping can be adjusted to either one, five, or ten blocks intervals. Selecting a certain value will allow selected objects to be moved and resized by that amount selected. For example, selecting ten will result in objects being moved around ten blocks at a time, while selecting one would result in objects being moved only one block at a time. Connections Setting connections to be shown will allow triggers and regions to show what they are connected to via a dotted line traced from both the logical entity to the entity being affected. This is useful for figuring out which triggers affect which entities on a map and allows for better organization in larger trigger systems. Hiding connections will not show the aforementioned line. Editor Theme Unlike the older Map Editor, the ALE has four themes to choose from: the default blue, a dark theme, and a space-themed purple and green theme. The theme can be selected and changed at any time. Preview Images and background textures can be viewed and seen in real-time with previews enabled. This allows mapmakers to immediately view what a certain background texture will look like without needing to enter the game. Applied effects such as hex color multipliers and texture offsets are also shown. The quality setting for preview is below the preview setting. The quality can be set to low or high. Controls and Keyboard Shortcuts * WASD keys - Move the screen around. You can move around faster by holding Shift while using any of the WASD keys. * Q - Minimizes everything, leaving only the grid view of the map. * Ctrl - Selects an object. You can select multiple objects by holding Ctrl and clicking the objects you want to select. * Alt - Deselects an object. This can be used to deselect objects that have been selected when trying to select certain objects. * Left Click + Drag - Selects multiple objects within a rectangular field created by dragging the mouse in any direction. * Left Click - Selects an object. Unlike Ctrl, this only selects one object at a time. * Right Click + Drag - Pans screen. * Mouse Wheel - Zoom in or out of the level editor. Scroll down to zoom out; scroll up to zoom in. * Ctrl + C - Copy selected objects to the clipboard. You can save in a clipboard using Ctrl + 0-9 as well. * Ctrl + V - Pastes objects saved in clipboard. You can also paste from different clipboards using the 0-9 keys. * Delete or Backspace - Deletes selected objects. * Ctrl + Z - Undo last operation or action. * Ctrl + Y - Redo last operation or action. * H - Mirrors selected object horizontally. * V - Mirrors selected objects vertically. Known Errors *Top left GUI messages: inputs unknown to the ALE entered; the GUI will register this as an error message on the upper right of the screen for every unknown input entered in. This can be almost anything, such as trigger actions with an argument (meaning the trigger is not set up properly) or unknown models/values that the ALE does not recognize - an example being the Defecator and Plasmacannon. It can happen after seeing about 20 errors, if you take the gun_defecator to this editor, then click it alot of times. http://prntscr.com/41j130 *Unknown player/weapon black model on screen: Players or weapons that do not have a known model selected will show up in the editor as a completely black weapon or character. To fix this, simply select the model of the weapon/character. *Yellow input field: Unrecognized symbols entered in an input field - this ranges from apostrophes to quotations marks. The input will still work, though the unrecognized symbols will be removed upon pressing Enter in the level editor, e.g adding quotation marks to a trigger that shows text will remove the quotation marks. The normal text will still remain. *Red input field: Unknown/argumentative input entered. This is when an input completely unknown is entered, e.g words entered instead of numbers or random symbols instead of numbers. Red input fields cannot be entered by pressing Enter in the level editor - this is to prevent any possible arguments/problems with a logical object/input field. External links *Advanced Level Editor manual on official Plazma Burst 2 site *Triggers manual on Plazma Brust 2 site Category:Custom Maps Category:Plazma Burst 2 Programs Category:Map Editor Category:Map Editing Category:Advanced Level Editor